


Bound

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-05
Updated: 2006-03-05
Packaged: 2018-08-16 00:46:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8080192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: If you love someone, set him free. (04/01/2003)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

  
Author's notes: Spoilers, 1.16 "Shuttlepod One."  
  
Thanks greatly to Black Goddess for her Deathfic Challengeâ€”I had started this story before she posted, but her challenge gave it an entirely new direction and, I think, improved it immensely. This fic is DEFINITELY not as bad as 'Insects.' And I'll be good from now on, promise.  
  
Many thanks and condolences to my betas: Squeakylightfoot and Kageygirl.  


* * *

Grey—the one you call Grey, he doesn't have a name—is standing next to you. He is as large as a Clydesdale horse; his legs are buried from his massive hooves to just under his knees in the snow. His thick, gray fur has been brushed to a bright sheen, reflecting the stark daylight. The snow is already marring the careful job that's been done on his four legs.

"Come," he says, extending his upper arm. His bracelets clack against one another, intricately carved beads of stone. He has nearly ten of them on his right arm, at least twenty on his left. His lower arms are clasped over his back, each one so weighed down with the gray-and black bracelets that it seems amazing he can even move them. Part of you, the part that is looking on quiet and unaffected as if none of this is happening, wonders what he'll do when all four of his arms are completely covered with bracelets. Maybe he'll use his legs, or maybe he'll be dead himself by then. He isn't young.

"Come," he repeats, when you don't look up, "it is time." He doesn't use your name; he has never used your name.

You take his hand and let him pull you upright. Your own bracelet, gray on black on gray, clicks against his as he takes your arm. The stones are cold, even though they've been against your skin.

* * *

Commander Charles Tucker's first memory after the shuttle crash was being carried: lying over the back of one of the huge, centaur-like beings. Heat was blasting off the creature in waves, almost burning. The hands on his back, holding him steady, felt like hot bars of iron. The alien was walking, its gait rolled and swayed like the sea.

Tucker had been so cold that the sudden rush of heat was painful, warmer blood forcing cold veins wide open. His fingers stung where they gripped into the thick fur, his feet felt like they were being gnawed. And all the while the huge creature carried him and swayed and rocked like a boat, moving stately over an icy sea. Snowflakes as large as insects landed on his face, the cheek exposed to the air, and wherever they touched it burned. When it got too cold he turned his head, pressing his numb ear to the creature's boiling flank. The heat spread through him so fast it was like flame.

By the time he arrived at the village, he was almost feverish with heat, his uniform equally soaking with sweat and snow. He never did find out which one of the aliens had carried him.

* * *

Grey is the keeper of the dead. It is his rank and privilege among his people, and he wears the bracelets with honor and joy. Each one is for a soul; each one _is_ a soul, though you're not sure you understood everything he told you. He is the bridge between the worlds, the one who remembers. When his people want to speak to their dead, they speak to him. You have seen him do this, walk with other villagers beyond the windbreak that surrounds their giant huts. It is a private thing, and you have never been told if the dead answer.

You wouldn't ask, anyway. It wouldn't be the same.

One day Grey will also die. His daughter will take his bracelet as the first of her collection of souls. All the other bracelets will be buried with him, she told you: when Grey is dead, their voices will be silent. She will take over the keeping, then her child after her, and on and on and on.

When you asked her why it was just her family, she smiled and tugged your ear the way her people do when a friend amuses them. She has gray fur, she said; so does her father as his father did before him. One of her children will have gray fur as well, and he or she will become the keeper after her.

Gray, of course, is the color of the dead. Black is for sorrow, like the stones.

* * *

Tucker named the healer 'Rose' because she was a blood roan: deep red, almost burgundy, down her back, flanks and legs. She had two of the gray and black stone bracelets on one of her arms, and they constantly clicked together, like bones as she moved. It was her hut he and Lieutenant Reed had been brought to. The space was dark and very warm from Rose's incredible body heat. It never seemed to dissipate, even when she was gone for hours, and the hut had a pervasive astringent smell, like medicine.

Mostly he tried to keep out of her way, avoiding those enormous hooves, the unyielding flanks that could crush him without thinking. She didn't talk to him much, though none of her people seemed to have any trouble with his human language. Tucker understood that: he had been healthy, with only an ankle broken, easy to fix. Once his temperature had stabilized, once his leg had been splinted, Rose lost interest in him.

But Reed, Reed hadn't woken up at all.

* * *

They use travois to carry their dead. Grey is dragging it, holding the two long poles easily in his lower hands. You walk beside him, one of your hands resting against his leg to help you keep your balance in the nearly thigh-deep snow. The splint on your leg is holding up well, though, and your ankle doesn't even hurt. But the cold is brutal; the light jacket from the shuttle pod is useless against it. Only your hand is warm, nearly burning where it touches his fur. During the ceremony you will have to stand right next to him, lean against him if you can, so you won't freeze to death.

Malcolm wanted to be buried at sea. Instead, his body will be burned. Grey's daughter told you it was to let the soul out of the body. You're not sure you believe her. You used to think that life itself: a living, working mind, was what kept the soul in the body; that without it the soul would leave, just drift away, nothing to bind it anymore.

But maybe you've been wrong, all this time. Maybe what's true for these centaur people is the only truth there is. You don't know what to believe anymore, you don't know anything.

Anything at all, except the cold that's making you tremble, the impossible heat coming from Grey's side, they way you have to lift your legs when you walk, the amount of strength it takes to push yourself through the snow.

The cold body is lying in the center of the travois, curled on its side, the way a horse might lie if sleeping. The travois is meant for a being Grey's size. It makes Malcolm look almost childlike, pathetically small. It seems cruel to do this to him.

Grey's daughter is walking on your left. She is still angry—you can tell by the stiff way she folds her lower arms—but when her head turns to you her eyes are only sad and kind. She reaches out and gently tugs your ear, a sign of affection. It burns for a moment and then her touch is gone.

The procession stops, you are at the pyre now. Grey's daughter takes you aside as you watch them lift the travois onto the platform. You don't recognize the four centaurs who do the work, though it is obvious that Malcolm's weight is inconsequential to them. Grey stands to the side, chanting in his own language. He raises all four of his arms, rattling the bracelets. The noise of the countless stones against stones is enough to make you wince.

"He is calling the dead," Grey's daughter says to you. She has pulled you against her chest, holding you to her with all four of her arms. Your skin, at least, is warm, absorbing the tremendous heat from her body. She is leaning her massive head down so she can speak softly into your ear, and her breath is hot against your face. "He is asking them to come and find your companion, to help carry him home. You will be able to see them," she says, moving one hand to point, "in the smoke and the flames, when they light the fire."

Grey's chanting reaches a crescendo and stops, the bracelets stilled as he claps his arms against his sides. There is no other sound now except the sliding wood, the creaking of the snow as the centaurs move through it.

Rose comes up beside Grey. She hands him a burning torch.

"You have to let him go," Grey's daughter says. "Without that, his soul will burn in his body; the dead won't be able to find him."

When you don't answer, she says: "you can't do this. You are punishing him for dying."

"Two days," you say, and your voice is almost silent, frozen. "It was only two more days."

"The dying cannot chose their time," she says. Her voice is louder, angry. Her father is stepping towards the pyre. "But the living still must free them. The living must let them go." You hear her teeth snap together in frustration, as if you were one of their children and she would scold you by biting your ear. It's so cold that you imagine your ear snapping off in her mouth; white with frost and red with crystallized blood.

"It's too late," you tell her, and in the next moment it's the truth: Grey touches the torch to the pile of logs and dried grasses, and the fire leaps upward like an explosion. In seconds you can't see any part of Malcolm at all, just black smoke and flames rising up into the dead white of the sky.

Grey's daughter lifts her head, mutters something in her own language. Her arms, still protecting you with her warmth, are trembling with anger. "He will burn," is the last thing she says to you, "he will burn."

You just stare at the flames. You don't see any shapes in them at all.

* * *

The same day he received the first communication from _Enterprise_ , Grey's daughter had come to see him.

Tucker was in Rose's hut. Rose had left a while ago; he didn't know where she had gone. The hut was almost unbearably warm, even without the healer in it. Tucker had the top of his uniform off, sleeves tied around his waist. Even so, his hair was damp with sweat. Sweat was running into his eyes.

He hadn't moved for hours. He was kneeling next to the pallet Rose had made for Reed, holding the lieutenant's hand. He was watching him breathe.

It had come to that: no more hope than for each successive breath, each trembling pulse of blood Tucker could feel in Reed's palm. Rose's eyes had said as much before she left, the last time she looked at him.

The _Enterprise_ would be there in two more days. Just two. It seemed impossible that Reed could keep breathing for that long.

Tucker had thought it was Rose coming back, thought that maybe she had something more to try. But instead it was Grey's daughter who had spoken, the next keeper of the dead.

"The healer has done all she can," she said.

"I know," Tucker answered. Rose had, he had seen it; but her people had no technology, no knowledge of humans. No remedies for creatures with only two legs and two arms. Who were so small, so easily broken.

No remedies at all, really: Rose herself wore bracelets, the same patterns of black and gray stone. So did everyone else in the village. These were not people who were used to good endings.

He felt Grey's daughter's hand, like hot iron on his back. "He is asking you, 'can I die now?'" She said, "and you must tell him 'yes.' It is time for him to leave."

"He can't die," Tucker said, counting the breaths, "my friends are coming, in two days. Just two more days. He has to hang on."

He could feel and hear it as Grey's daughter shifted her massive, horse-shaped body to settle in beside him. They were barely touching, but it was like being next to a furnace. Tucker let go of Reed's hand only long enough to pull off his wet blue undershirt; it barely helped. Reed wasn't sweating, which scared him. His hand in Tucker's was limp and cold.

"He can't choose his time to die," she said quietly, her voice a hot rumble in the near silence.

"He's not dying," Tucker almost snarled it. He held Reed's hand tighter. He glared at her sad, sympathetic eyes. "He's not going to die."

"This is not something you can control," Grey's daughter said. She reached for Tucker's ear, but he shrugged away from her. Instead she clasped all four of her hands in front of her, looking at him gravely. "You are the only one here who loves him, the only one who can let him go. If you don't let him die, then his soul will be trapped here, in his body." She reached out again and tugged Tucker's ear gently before he could flinch, making him look at her. "You can't want that for him. You would not be so cruel."

"You don't understand," Tucker said. He turned away from her, looking back at Reed's face. There was no movement there, no sign of life except for the shallow, unsteady breathing. "My friends have...tools, abilities you've never dreamed about. They'll be able to heal him."

"I would believe it," she answered evenly, "but this one will not survive until they come."

"Shut up! Shut your mouth!" Tucker didn't realize how loudly he'd shouted, how angry he was, until he saw her ears flatten against her skull, felt the almost painful pounding of his heart. "He's going to live," he said, voice shaking, "god _damn_ you. He's going to live."

He could see the ripple along Grey's daughter's fur as she fought to control her anger. She heaved herself to her hooves, clenching her lower hands on her back so that they grabbed tufts of her own fur. "I do not know all your words," she said sharply, "but I understand that you do not want to believe. I am sorry, but I am the next keeper of the dead, and your companion is dying—what you wish makes it no less true." Her voice softened. "Let him die," she said, "that is the only thing left that you can do for him."

Tucker said nothing, just glared as she turned and ducked gracefully through the entrance flap to the healer's hut. A blast of freezing, snow-filled air swirled in after her, and Tucker shivered where it touched his wet skin. The flap fell back again, leaving the hut hot and very quiet. In the silence, Reed's breathing was a harsh, irregular rasp. Tucker choked on a sudden sob, then swallowed, clenched his teeth until his jaw ached and he had himself back under control. He realized he was holding Reed's hand tightly enough to hurt, and loosened his grip immediately. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm so sorry." But there had been no reaction at all.

Tucker took a breath, closed his eyes and leaned over until he was touching his forehead to Reed's. The other man's skin was dry and cool. "I'm not gonna let you die, Malcolm," he said, "you hear me, Lieutenant? You can't die. I'm not letting you die." He swallowed against the pain in his throat, blinked back the sting in his eyes. "Please don't die, Malcolm," he whispered, "it's just two more days. Only two more days. Please don't die."

But Reed only lived six more hours. By the time Grey's daughter came back he was gone.

She had brought Tucker a bracelet, gray and black stone. She tied it to his wrist silently, neither one of them saying anything.

* * *

You wake up gasping, heart thudding and hot from the grips of some nightmare. You're back in the healer's hut—you recognize the astringent smell—but you don't remember returning there. You don't remember leaving the funeral; following Grey and his daughter back to the village. The cold, you think, the cold must have finally gotten to you. You can still feel it, despite the inexhaustible warmth surrounding you: a winter storm deep inside, one that will never leave.

Malcolm is dead. He is dead, and gone, and gone. You knew that, of course, but now you are suddenly aware of it with a terrible, breathtaking clarity. You were holding him when his heart finally stopped. You watched his body burn. He is dead; he is nothing now. Yesterday he was still alive and now there are only ashes.

And it occurs to you, suddenly, hideously, like coming awake after a dream, that you refused to let his soul leave. You never told him he could die.

And the horror of that is more than you can stand.

There has been no snow or wind since the funeral, and it is easy enough to walk in Grey's tracks, moving far out beyond the windbreak of the village. Grey's people are almost all asleep. The one sentry, chestnut brown by the blaze of his torchlight, glances your way but either doesn't see you or pays you no attention. You are limping, the splint rubbing painfully now, but your feet are so quickly going numb that you can ignore it; it's only a matter of time. The moon is bright tonight, making your path easy. There are long shadows as you move against the snow.

You have never been so cold, not even on the shuttle pod when you were slowly freezing to death. You wonder if this cold goes beyond anything any other human has ever experienced, or if it is only new for you alone. You know it's the kind of cold where if you fall you won't get up again.

But you have reached the pyre now, or what's left of it. The ashes and charred wood are featureless black shapes against the snow. You can smell the smoke, the scent of burning.

The snow here has been packed down where they laid the logs for the pyre, and you don't sink when you lie on your back. You're not sure when you stopped shivering, but you can't feel the cold that must be seeping into you through your light jacket and uniform. There is too much moonlight to let you see the stars.

"I'm letting you die, Malcolm," your lips are numb and it's hard to form words, but surely that can't matter; surely the dead will hear you anyway. "You're free. I let you go."

You hear nothing, you feel nothing, and you wonder if it's too late, just like Grey's daughter warned you. Maybe Malcolm's soul burned in his body; maybe there's nothing left of him anywhere.

Or maybe there's no such thing as a soul. Maybe the moment he died he was already gone.

But it's peaceful here, staring up at the veiled stars, the overly bright light of this alien moon. When the lights of the shuttle pass, far up overhead, you don't recognize them for a moment; assume it's a trick of the moonlight, a trick of your brain. Then you remember that it's the second day. The _Enterprise_ has finally come.

And you lie there and wonder where they'll land, how far from the village, and if they'll come here first when the find out you're missing. You imagine your own funeral pyre, Jonathan wearing a bracelet of gray and black stones. The fire would be warm.

When Grey's daughter lifts you with her four arms you can't feel it, but when she pulls you tight to her chest you gasp because the rush of heat is like pain. She grasps both of your hands in one of hers and the pain would make you scream except you don't have enough breath. Not even enough to struggle.

"You cannot die now," she says as she turns and starts running with you back to the village, "I won't let you; it's not your time."

You want to ask her how she knows, how she could possibly have any idea, but you're too cold and too hot and exhaustion is crushing you like the strength of her arms holding you against her body. She bites your ear, finally, out of anger, and you don't even feel it.

You can feel your consciousness ebbing away, like a gentle sliding, and you wonder if this is what Malcolm felt like, if he even knew. But your eyes are still open, and you can look over Grey's daughter's shoulder and still see the remnants of the pyre: dark ashes on white snow under a moon-silvered sky.

And maybe, for a second, you see a shape; like a person, almost, floating up. Maybe he even waves. Maybe there's even a smile.

But it's dark and it's burning and cold and there are too many shadows. And she won't turn around even when you shout at her, with all the strength left in your frozen lungs.

But maybe...

Maybe you unbound him, after all.


End file.
